The Ripper Secret

by The Ripper Secret (retail) (epub)

  And that, Pedachenko agreed, was the question to which he himself wanted an answer: just what, exactly, were the police doing about it?

  Charles Warren, as far as he knew, was still out of the country on his annual holiday. In fact, Pedachenko knew precisely when the man had gone, because he had watched from a discreet distance as Warren and his family had embarked in a cab outside the man’s home and been driven away. Following the vehicle hadn’t been difficult, and a short while later Pedachenko had observed his quarry disembarking at Charing Cross railway station and taking a train to Dover. The deduction that the commissioner was going on holiday hadn’t been difficult, and Pedachenko had confirmed this information by following a group of plainclothes officers from Scotland Yard to a nearby public house and simply eavesdropping on their conversation.

  The Englishman’s action had irritated Pedachenko, who had intended to resume his ‘work’ shortly after his murder of the woman he now knew had been named Martha Tabram, but Warren’s action had indirectly prevented him from doing so. The whole point of the Russian’s campaign was to force the commissioner to accede to his demands, and he could only do that if Warren was in London and could be pressurized.

  So Pedachenko had stayed his hand, waiting for his quarry to return. But when he’d heard that Warren might be away for at least a further week, he had decided to act anyway. Perhaps, he had reasoned, the best strategy wasn’t to wait until the man got back after all, but instead escalate his campaign so that the commissioner would be faced with a massive public outcry once he did get back to London.

  And on the Saturday morning, the previous day, the people of Whitechapel had woken up to the news that the unknown killer had struck again, and this time with greatly increased ferocity.

  Pedachenko smiled to himself. The newspapers were working for him, helping his campaign and whipping up a wave of public indignation against the apparently inept police force. They were instilling not just a sense of fear, but something more like a feeling of raw terror in the minds of the people, and especially of the women, in Whitechapel, Spitalfields and the East End.

  And that was exactly what he wanted Charles Warren to come back and face.

  Monday, 3 September 1888

  Whitechapel, London

  ‘Well, now we know who she is, or rather who she was,’ Detective Inspector Frederick Abberline announced to the superintendent. ‘In fact, we’ve pretty much got her life story now.’

  He had been summoned back by Williamson from Bethnal Green late that afternoon to report in person on the progress – or rather the lack of it – in the murder enquiry. Unfortunately, despite exhaustive questioning by officers of everybody they could find in the area around Buck’s Row, they had discovered absolutely no new or useful information. Nobody had seen the murder being committed, and nor had anybody seen either the victim or a man who could have been her killer arriving at or leaving the vicinity at the time that the murder must have been carried out.

  ‘What was her name?’ Williamson demanded.

  ‘Mary Ann Nichols,’ Abberline replied, ‘spelt with one “l”. She was another unfortunate, and some of the earlier reports were correct: she was lodging at a doss house in Thrawl Street. She was turned out by the house deputy early that morning because she couldn’t pay for her bed for the night.’

  Abberline consulted his notes.

  ‘We managed to track down her estranged husband, and he gave us a lot of the background information, and some of the women we’ve talked to have filled in the gaps. She was born here in London in August 1845, and her maiden name was Mary Ann Walker. In 1864 she married a man named William Nichols, who was a printer’s machinist and worked for a firm named Perkins, Bacon and Company at Whitefriars Street in the City. They lived first on Trafalgar Street in Walworth and then in Peabody Square, Duke Street, Lambeth, and had five children, but the marriage failed in 1880.’

  ‘Why?’ Williamson asked.

  ‘That’s not entirely clear, sir. There was a bit of a domestic problem because Mary Ann’s father accused William of infidelity. He claimed William was having it off with the nurse who had been present at the birth of their last child, but William denied that absolutely. He says that the couple separated because of Mary Ann’s drinking. That, and the fact that she had deserted him on numerous occasions.’

  ‘And do you believe what he’s told you?’

  Abberline shrugged.

  ‘I don’t think it’s important whether I believe him or not,’ he replied, ‘because I don’t think her early history has got anything at all to do with what happened to her. But William struck me as a decent man, so I think he was probably telling me the truth. He claims he supported Mary Ann with a weekly payment of five shillings until 1882, but then he discovered that she was living with another man, and also working as a part-time prostitute. Because she’d taken up with somebody else, William was no longer legally obliged to pay her an allowance, and so he stopped giving her any money. Of course, that meant she hadn’t a lot of option but to continue selling her body on the streets if she wanted to survive.

  ‘She was in the Lambeth Workhouse from April 1882 for nearly a year, then went to stay with her father for a few months. Afterwards, she moved in with a blacksmith named Thomas Stuart Drew, who lived in York Street in Walworth. When they broke up, Mary Ann went downhill even further. She spent time in three different workhouses, and early this year a couple of our constables arrested her for sleeping rough in Trafalgar Square, and she was put back in the Lambeth workhouse.

  ‘According to a woman who knew her, she then took a job as a domestic for a couple out in Wandsworth, but left the job after a couple of months. She returned to the East End and almost immediately went back on the streets. For the first three weeks in August she shared a bed in a lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street, Spitalfields, with an elderly woman named Emily or “Nelly” Holland.’

  ‘Did this Holland woman supply all this background information for you?’

  Abberline shook his head.

  ‘Oddly enough, no. She didn’t have much idea of the woman’s history, but we managed to find another source. Anyway, after a while Nichols moved out to another lodging house in Flower and Dean Street. But Holland’s evidence is important, because she was probably the last person to see her alive.’

  ‘At the lodging house, I suppose?’ Williamson asked.

  ‘No, it was much later than that. Nichols went out drinking that night, and was thrown out of a pub called the Frying Pan in Brick Lane when it closed. She went back to the Thrawl Street lodging, but she’d drunk whatever money she had and couldn’t pay for a bed and so the house deputy turned her out at about half past one in the morning. She told him she’d soon be back with the money, and asked him to keep her bed for her.

  ‘You must have heard about the fire that broke out that day down at Shadwell Dry Dock?’ Inspector Abberline asked, an apparent non sequitur.

  Williamson nodded.

  ‘Yes. It wasn’t too serious, I gather, but it attracted a lot of attention. What’s that got to do it?’

  ‘Nothing, really,’ Abberline replied, ‘except that Nelly Holland decided that she wanted to go and take a look at it, and she met Nichols on the way back. Holland was heading for Thrawl Street, and saw Nichols on the corner of Osborn Street and Whitechapel Road. According to her, it was exactly half past two by the chimes of the clock on St Mary’s Church, and the two women talked together for a few minutes. According to Holland, Nichols was drunk, but she claimed that she’d had a good day, earning her lodging money three times over, although she had then obviously spent it all on drink.

  ‘Holland suggested that she should come back with her to the Thrawl Street lodging house, but Nichols refused. The last Holland saw of her was when she staggered off along the Whitechapel Road, heading in the general direction of the London Hospital. And of course, Buck’s Row is down that way too.’

  Williamson nodded slowly.

  ‘So she was pres
umably out looking for another customer to raise the money for her bed when she met her killer?’

  ‘That’s what it looks like, sir, yes.’

  ‘Who identified her body?’

  ‘As I told you this morning, the Bethnal Green station officers had had a few reports that she’d lodged at the Thrawl Street doss house, and a couple had said that she shared a bed there with Nelly Holland. So Holland was picked up and asked to identify the body. She obviously recognized her, but she only knew the woman as “Polly”, which didn’t help us very much. There was no identification in her clothes, but the detectives had followed up on the laundry mark that was found on her petticoat. They visited the Lambeth workhouse, and one of the inmates there, a woman named Mary Ann Monk, was taken to the mortuary. She identified the body of the victim as Mary Ann Nichols, and told us that she had stayed at the workhouse until May this year, and she knew quite a lot about the woman’s history.’

  ‘And I suppose nobody saw or heard anything?’ Williamson enquired sourly. ‘At the scene of the crime, I mean.’

  ‘There were no eyewitnesses, no,’ Abberline replied, ‘but one person did claim to have heard something. A woman named Harriet Lilley, who lives in Buck’s Row itself, at number 7, told one of the constables that she’d heard whispering, or perhaps a muttered conversation, outside her property at half past three, and then what sounded like moans or gasps of pain. She says she woke up her husband, but then the 3.30 train went past and neither of them heard anything else. And they didn’t bother going outside, or even to the window, to have a look. Noises like that aren’t exactly uncommon in Whitechapel.’

  ‘So at least that gives us a precise time for the murder.’

  ‘That’s true, sir,’ Abberline agreed, ‘but it’s not much help, and we already knew fairly accurately when it had been committed, because of the report from the beat constable, PC John Neil. He walked down Buck’s Row on his regular beat at 3.15 and saw nothing unusual, so Nichols must have been alive then. Half an hour later, at fifteen minutes before four, he walked that route again, but the body had been found about five minutes earlier by a couple of men leaving home to go to work. So we know she was killed within that twenty-five minute interval, and all the report from the Lilley woman does is suggest that the murder took place at almost exactly 3.30. If the killer had known Neil’s patrol route and timing, you would even expect him to carry out the murder at that time, because that would be when the constable would be as far away as possible from Buck’s Row. So, as I said, it’s not that much help. Of course, if the Lilley woman had bothered to get out of bed and investigate what she’d heard, it might have been a very different story.’

  ‘Are you serious about that, Abberline? Do you really think the murderer timed his killing based upon a police officer’s patrol route?’ Williamson asked.

  ‘I don’t know, sir. All I’m saying is that, if he didn’t know when the constable would be walking down Buck’s Row, he was very lucky to pick the time he did to kill Nichols. But if you want my hunch, sir, I don’t think we’re dealing with a man who’s just some common thug. There’ve been two killings so far in Whitechapel that are probably the work of this man, and there are only four common factors that I’ve been able to identify.’

  ‘Four factors? What four factors?’

  ‘First, the victims were both unfortunates, prostitutes. Second, according to the doctors who examined their bodies, they were both killed – or at least both were mutilated – by a knife. Third, the killer might as well have been invisible, because nobody’s seen even a trace of him. And, lastly, there’s no apparent motive. These women had nothing of value on them, no money or jewellery or anything like that, so we can rule out robbery. They weren’t related to each other, so I doubt if there’s some family involvement, no jealous or embittered husband or relative, nothing like that, and they were unfortunates, so they don’t look like crimes of passion either. The only thing each of these women had was her life, and that’s what the killer took from them.

  ‘If we were dealing with some typical thug, I think somebody would have seen him at the scene of one of the murders, lurking about, carrying out the killing itself or leaving the area. But this man is clever. It’s as if he times his attacks so that the area is deserted, and chooses a spot where he won’t be seen doing his work. That suggests he’s either an intelligent man, or he’s just been incredibly lucky, and I believe it’s most likely the former.’

  Williamson nodded thoughtfully. He didn’t disagree with anything Abberline had said.

  ‘What about the victims?’ he asked. ‘Apart from them being prostitutes, is there any other common factor there? Do you think he selects them beforehand and entices them to the spot he’s chosen for the killing, or does he pick them at random?’

  Abberline shook his head. ‘Finding a whore in Whitechapel isn’t difficult at any hour, sir. He probably locates a good spot and then picks the first suitable woman who wanders along. If there’s anyone else nearby, I expect he waits until the coast is clear and then attacks the next unfortunate he sees. I doubt if he’d risk talking to one of them beforehand, because there’d be too much chance of somebody seeing them together and remembering what he looks like. I think he just waits for the right moment, and then gets to work.’

  ‘I don’t think “work” is quite the right word for you to use in this situation, Abberline,’ Williamson pointed out. ‘We’re talking about the brutal murders of women here, not some type of casual labour.’

  The detective inspector nodded.

  ‘I know, sir, but when you look at the conditions in White chapel and other parts of the East End of London, you can’t help feeling that in some ways these women are better off dead. To be turned out of a doss house because she hadn’t got the four pence needed to pay for a bed has to mean that she was completely destitute, probably owning little more than the clothes she was wearing at the time. Obviously I condemn what this man is doing, but if you consider the overall situation in London, you could almost argue that he’s performing a public service.’

  ‘I hope you keep that kind of view to yourself, Abberline. These women, these unfortunates, are just as entitled to our protection as the richest and most elegant ladies in the West End of the city.’

  That, Williamson knew, as well as any other senior officer, was the official view of the situation, and the view that he was required, as a member of the Metropolitan Police, to promulgate. Privately, he agreed with Abberline. He’d visited Whitechapel and other slum areas of the city and had been appalled at the conditions he had found. The filth, poverty, unemployment, rampant sickness, and above all the absolute lack of hope and of any way for the people to improve their lot, had sickened him. In many cases, he knew that the people he had seen really were better off dead, harsh though that view was.

  Abberline took a sheet of paper out of his pocket and glanced at it for a moment.

  ‘What’s that?’ Williamson asked.

  ‘The notes I made during the autopsy on Nichols, sir. It was performed by a Dr Llewellyn, who has a surgery in the Whitechapel Road, not far from Buck’s Row. He was the doctor called to the scene of Nichols’s killing by PC Thain. He described the injuries to the woman’s body, several of which could have been fatal, but actually weren’t, because she was already dead.’

  ‘Because her throat had been cut, you mean?’

  ‘Not necessarily, sir. One of the things Dr Llewellyn noticed was that there was bruising on Nichols’s face which he thought could either have been caused by a blow, or by pressure. He also stated that her face was swollen, and that there was less blood at the scene than he would have expected if the cause of death had been the severing of the arteries in the neck.’

  ‘So how was she killed?’

  ‘He wasn’t certain, sir, because of the extensive wounds to the body, but he thought she might have been asphyxiated, and that that was the cause of death. Then, when the killer began his mutilation, there would be less blood from
the wounds, which would reduce the chance of him getting any of it on his clothing, though his hands would probably have been covered in blood.’

  Abberline looked back at his notes.

  ‘When I heard that,’ he went on, ‘I contacted the doctor who’d been called to examine the body of Martha Tabram, a man named Killeen. He also noticed bruising on that victim’s face, which could have been consistent with her being asphyxiated, either by a man’s hand covering her mouth and nose, or by the use of a pad of material. So I think the killer first subdues them, or more likely kills them, by asphyxiation, and then uses his knife when they’re dead. That method of operation, plus the fact that there’s no evidence he has any kind of sexual relations with them, either before or after the killing, suggests a very cold and determined man, not an opportunist killer, and he certainly doesn’t seem to be motivated by any kind of sexual impulse.’

  ‘So what do you intend to do now?’ Williamson asked.

  ‘I’m going to continue working with the detectives at Bethnal Green, as you instructed, unless you have some new orders for me, sir.’

  The superintendent shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Do what you can there. Make sure that you find out everything about the victim that you are able to. Check that the local detectives have knocked on every door near the scene of the killing, and talked to everybody who was in the area that night. I just can’t believe that nobody saw anything.’

  ‘They’ve already checked everybody, but I’ll go through the statements they took again, just to make sure that they didn’t miss anything.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘So apart from that, is there anything else you want me to do at the moment, sir?’ Abberline asked.

  ‘No, not for the present. You’d better get back to Bethnal Green. Obviously, if you find anything significant or important that you think I should know about, let me know as soon as possible.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ Abberline said, then stood up and left the office.